The Bermudez Triangle (20 page)

Mel widened her eyes in a “stop what?” look.

“I have to go.” Avery made her way toward the door.

“Why?”

She didn’t answer. She left Mel sitting there holding her stuffed palm tree with a hurt expression on her face.

Avery wasn’t ready to go home yet. She drove around and smoked until she accidentally blew a smoldering ash into her own backseat and had to pull over and smack out the little orange flame that was burrowing through the pleather.

Then she drove to Gaz’s.

Avery let herself in through the outside door into Gaz’s basement. She never had to knock there either. Gaz was watching
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
. He was on the scene where Willy Wonka was about to take the group on the psychedelic boat ride.

“What’s up?” Gaz said, pausing the movie. Avery pushed aside
a laundry basket, sat next to him on the couch, and put her head in her hands.

“Things are really complicated,” she said.

He accepted this statement at face value and let her stare into the basket of his shirts and boxers in peace. Two more reasons to love Gaz—he never hassled anyone for explanations they didn’t feel like giving, and he
literally
kept his dirty laundry in the open. He was a transparent guy.

“I got fired,” she said as her eyes went blurry from staring at a red-and-blue-striped pair of boxers for too long.

“Oh, man. Sorry.”

She drummed her fingers on her knee and looked at the frozen picture on the screen. Wonka looked particularly nuts, all wide eyes and flying curls under that big purple top hat. Wonka was kind of her god—the creator of dreams, the exposer of the fake. Everyone’s favorite sadist. His look questioned her now and demanded that she tell the truth about herself. She couldn’t lie to Willy Wonka.

“Do I seem gay to you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Gaz said. He didn’t sound like he thought the question was odd. “I guess anyone could be.”

“I’m not,” Avery said firmly. “Okay.”

Avery leaned back very deliberately and inserted herself under Gaz’s arm. It felt as good to be next to him as she’d hoped. He was lean and warm and for some reason he smelled like french fries.

It happened gradually over the course of the next few minutes, without Avery really thinking about it much. Gaz slid lower, she moved closer—and they just kind of oozed over the line between spacing out and preparing to kiss. When Gaz turned his face to Avery’s, the deal already seemed done, and she was content. She closed her eyes.

And it was good.

Again she didn’t feel that rush she’d experienced with Mel, or the deep sense of connection. But Gaz had
something
she needed right now. Maybe if she just did this long enough, she would like it just as much as she’d liked being with …

Mel’s face kept popping into Avery’s brain, and she tried very hard to push it away and replace it with Wonka’s intense stare, which was still frozen on the screen. She understood now—she had to make everything stop. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Mel or even love Mel—she just couldn’t
date
her. Something had happened between them that summer, something that had felt right and had maybe even
been
right. But it wasn’t right anymore. It wasn’t who Avery was; it wasn’t what she really wanted. And now she needed to undo it all, turn things back to how they were before.

That was why she was here, rolling over onto Gaz’s lap. Going from friend to friend, girl to boy, employment to unemployment—one crisis to another. She didn’t want to think about how Mel would cry, or how Nina would react, or how she would pay for her car, or what she was doing with her life.

Right now she just had to undo. One thing at a time.

When Mel gat
to school the next morning, she discovered that all of the things that Avery normally stored in her locker were gone.

No note. No explanation. Just an empty hook and a whole bunch of extra space.

Mel scrambled through the contents, but nothing of Avery’s was left—not the music folder, or the chemistry book with the broken spine, or the cigarettes that Mel was always afraid someone would notice. And then Mel saw the worst of it. Sitting in the middle of the top shelf was Avery’s thumb ring.

There was a buzzing sound in her head. Mel took the ring and quickly shoved it onto her own thumb. It was too large, so she put it into her front pocket.

She skipped first period, which was only twenty minutes anyway since it was the start of the Thanksgiving holiday. She sat in the last stall of the bathroom instead, flicking the lid up and down on the little bin marked Feminine Disposal that was attached to the wall. The bin also had no bottom and no bag, so it could never be used for anything except for making noise and transmitting
this slightly scary message that Mel couldn’t help but take personally.

An hour later Mel was still in the bathroom. She figured she was definitely marked absent by now and so there was no need to go to her classes. Instead she decided to venture into the halls and try to find Avery and ask her what was going on. Unfortunately, with all the dodging and weaving that she had to do to avoid being seen by any of her teachers or by the security guy who paced the halls, Mel managed to miss Avery at every turn. When she actually did spot her between seventh and eighth periods, it was in such a public place that there was nothing Mel could say or do without causing a huge scene (which would just make things worse), so she slipped out to the parking lot to stand by Avery’s car and wait.

Avery must have bypassed her own locker after eighth because she appeared just a moment after the bell rang. She didn’t look very pleased that Mel was standing by the car, preparing for a confrontation. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Hey,” Avery said, making sure not to look Mel in the eye. She started shuffling through her bag.

“You took your stuff,” Mel said.

“I just thought it would be better,” Avery replied, keeping her attention completely on the contents of her bag.

“But you left your ring.”

“I just need a few days, Mel.” Avery’s voice was low but still — cracking.

“A few days for what?”

“To think.”

“About?”

“Stuff. I have a lot of … stuff. I just need a few days.”

“What about this weekend?”

“I don’t know,” Avery replied, finally pulling her keys out of the clutter. “I think we should just spend time on our own. You have to go to your mom’s anyway.”

“I’m just going there for Thanksgiving dinner.”

Avery was talking like it was no big deal at all to cancel four days’ worth of plans, including Saturday night, when Mel’s dad was going to be gone and Avery was scheduled to stay over. They didn’t just skip those nights. Mel
lived
for those.

“It’s just one weekend, Mel.”

Mel felt her knees start to give. She carefully lowered herself and sat down right there between the cars.

“Mel, I’m late.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got my lesson now. I’ll call you later, okay?”

Avery got into her car. It was punctuation. This discussion was over. Mel wanted to do something dramatic—leap up and grab Avery, stand behind the car and block it in, scream at the top of her lungs—all awful things that would do no good. As it was, she was already sitting on the ground in the parking lot, and people were looking at her, probably thinking that she was a crazy lesbian. But all she wanted was her best friend, the girl she loved, to put her stuff back in her locker and say she’d spend the next few days with her.

Mel watched the school buses come into the lot and Avery’s car disappear around the block. Everybody looked so happy to have the next few days off. To Mel those days were just holes—big, deep holes that she’d never be able to fill.

It was plain
black, very stark. Shiny. Thin columns of white print. Photos of sumptuously curved violins. Austere rehearsal rooms with blond floors and blank walls. The occasional conductor springing up from the bottom of the page or the string quartet leaping in from the side. Everybody looking serious, competent, and calm. There was something about the way this brochure was designed that screamed: YOU WILL NEVER BE THIS GOOD. GIVE UP NOW, LOSER, WHILE RITE AID IS STILL HIRING.

It seemed like Avery had had this brochure and application in her possession since the beginning of time. In actuality, it took her two weeks to work up the courage to rip open the envelope it came in. It had taken her another week to read it. Now she was lying on her bed in her favorite pair of gray sweatpants, which were cut off at midcalf. Her collie, Bandit, sprawled next to her like a living body pillow. Her hair was unwashed and sticking up at weird angles, and all she’d eaten were three pieces of bread with mustard and a few handfuls of cold leftover turkey The tryptophan hadn’t knocked her out, but she was feeling very languid. Now
that Thanksgiving was over, she had no plans at all for days. If she wanted to, she could go to Mel’s on Saturday and stay. But then there would be a lot of sad faces and clinging, and Mel would want to talk about their relationship.

God. She was turning into a guy. Avery turned back to the brochure. She knew perfectly well that there was no way she was going to slip into this shiny, serious-looking world. But Avery went on, skipping over the first few pages, which described how hard the school was and how brilliant all the students were, and went right for the important part—the application procedure for piano students. They required a CD or tape along with the completed application. Postmark date: December 15.

She pushed the brochure away from her. Bandit put his paw on it.

What the hell was she doing with her life? She was just sliding by in her classes. She’d been fired from Mortimer’s. If she was very lucky, she might be able to squeeze into a state school, pick some kind of noncommittal major, graduate, and get some generic job that required sitting at a computer. She’d gain weight from all the sitting and have to start eating frozen diet meals or drinking low-carb shakes from a can.

She carefully removed the brochure from Bandit’s grasp and opened it again to the admissions page. She read through the list of pieces acceptable for the recording. There were enough listed that she was happy to find that she owned at least four of them and played two of them passably. This gave her the courage to continue reading:

Gaz had a Tascam four-track recorder, and Hareth had an illegal copy of Pro Tools. Either way, she’d be able to get something on tape. She could persuade her music teacher at school and her piano teacher at home to write up some letters pretty quickly—they were always on her case about applying to music school. If she actually got up, got dressed, and got her ass in gear, she might be able to put this thing together.

Instead she rolled off her bed and went searching for leftover turkey.

As Avery came from her darkened bedroom, the glaring lights in the hallway almost sent her reeling. There was a strong odor of pine coming from a candle burning in the kitchen. Avery knew what
this meant. Her mother always felt that the second the turkey had been put away, she was allowed to start rolling out for Christmas. As Avery made her way down the hall, she heard the
20 Classic Christmas Songs
album on and saw her mother roping off the kitchen doorway with gold drugstore tinsel.

“Crime scene?” Avery asked. “Did someone murder an elf in there?”

“I’m going to pin it up so it drapes. Just go under.”

Avery leaned against the wall as Bing Crosby bu-bu-bu-booed his way through “Mele Kalikimaka,” the Hawaiian Christmas song.

“Bing Crosby used to beat his kids with empty whiskey bottles,” she said, rubbing her eyes hard with the heels of her hands, trying to get them to adjust.

“That’s a nice piece of holiday trivia.”

“It was an early attempt at recycling.”

“Mmmmm.”

Avery slid down the wall and sat on the floor. She didn’t even feel like making the effort to limbo the tinsel.

“What are you and Mel up to this weekend?” her mother asked.

“Me and Mel?” Avery said, her voice arching.

“I never see Nina anymore.”

“She’s busy,” Avery said quickly. “Student council.”

“Nina always was a hard worker.”

And what did
that
mean? Avery wondered. That she wasn’t?

Well, okay. She was slumped on the floor like a rag. Maybe it
wasn’t so unfair.

“What’s the point of Christmas in Hawaii?” Avery asked.

“They deserve the holiday too.”

“Yeah, but it must be weird.”

“Only if you’re not from Hawaii,” her mother said. “Everything’s normal to somebody.”

And now Mom is a Zen master
, she thought.
Is the tinsel halfway up the doorframe or halfway down?

With effort Avery pulled herself up from her seat. She would call Gaz. That was at least a start. Better than sitting here, wondering if the phone was going to ring or if Mel was going to turn up. This was her fate now. Inertia and life on the run.

It would make a good band name, but it sucked as a way to live.

December 2

TO: Steve

FROM: Nina

Ugh. Here we go. December is like insanity month on the council. I had three different meetings after school for the toy drive, the food drive, and the holiday dance committee. How are things post-Thanksgiving? Did you eat Tofurky?